Tuesday, August 10, 1943

The Charlotte News

Tuesday, August 10, 1943

FIVE EDITORIALS

Site Ed. Note: The front page reports of an attempt to bring about a nationwide strike starting in Genoa, Italy, after Allied bombing had resumed Saturday night on Milan, Turin, and Genoa. The object of the intended strike was to effect a peace with the Allies. The Badoglio Government had deployed troops to try to frustrate the strike.

Meanwhile, in Sicily, the British and American armies were moving ever closer to one another, the Eighth Army having positioned itself within seven miles of Randazzo from the south and the Seventh Army, within ten miles of the town from the west.

The remaining Axis toehold in Sicily was steadily becoming smaller and more precarious as Americans, Canadians, and British moved steadily from different directions toward Messina, sweeping the Axis forces further back toward the exit ramp with every passing day.

The British had captured Bronte and Acireale, as shown on the map, while the Americans had captured Cesaro, to add to their weekend conquests of San Fratello and San Agata.

A photograph shows the recent meeting of General Montgomery and General Patton, along with Maj.-General Jeffrey Keyes, to plot final strategy for the taking of Messina.

The Russian Army was now closing in from four sides on Kharkov. Bryansk to the north was also under steady attack.

In the Pacific, Allied bombers dropped bombs on four principal strongholds of the Japanese, spread two thousand miles apart, from Vila on Kolombangara, to the north of New Georgia, to Amboina, the former Dutch colony in the East Indies, with Bairoko, north of Munda on New Georgia, and Salamaua, much further to the west in New Guinea, also receiving heavy blows.

A bizarre kidnapping story surfaced out of Albany, Oregon where a woman who had received head injuries during the attack on Pearl Harbor had been charged with child-stealing for kidnapping a young baby, then claiming it as her own newborn after pretending to have been pregnant for nine months. There was no harm to the baby and it was returned to its rightful parents.

Perhaps, the woman was simply yet another victim of the Japanese militarists’ temerity exhibited at Pearl Harbor.

On the editorial page, "Shift Time" compares the slackening pace of American industry with that in Germany. It predicts that while America would overcome its malaise in time and snap out of the slump, Germany was incapable of doing so. For the German slump was enforced from without, by persistent Allied bombing raids on its industrial cities.

"Jumping Jacks" looks at the plight of dictators, that their slated destiny was always to fall. Regardless, the Allied focus had to be on winning the war, not worrying about what despot on which to center animus of the moment. As long as bullets were being fired from the Axis countries, the Allies had to regard each of the Axis nations as a threat to world democracy, regardless of who led the fight.

"This Time We Stay" examines the realization by Americans that the period between the World Wars had been a truce and not the peace which Americans had, by and large, believed it to be. The lesson, it ventures, to be learned from the aftermath of the World War was that America must this time maintain its alliances and not disentangle from them, as before, once the war was won.

Drew Pearson devotes his column to the development of gliders in the Army and Navy, as pioneered by Colonel Fred B. Dent.

Gliders, it had been reported by military sources, had advanced operations in Sicily by a full week by preceding the landing of infantry troops, sailing inland and disrupting communication lines of the enemy.

Samuel Grafton turns his attention to the Jews of Europe and America's tendency to treat them as a special case when discussing their gassing by the Nazis in Poland, but to treat them as part of a more generalized problem when discussing how to rescue them from the plight, as part of the general European refugee population.

When discussion at the recent Bermuda Conference on refugees turned to rescue of the Jews from the Balkans, questions arose, stultifying attempts at answer: How many Jews could be emigrated from Rumania? Where would they go?

Mr. Grafton suggests that this type of mentality was defeatist ab initio, that the only way to tackle the issue was to determine to rescue as many Jews as possible from the atrocities being committed upon them by the Nazis, and to treat them, if in no other way, as prisoners of war, for their own protection for the duration.

Dorothy Thompson analyzes the current situation in Germany and Italy and finds that the Allies, by not having in place an articulated policy of occupation to orchestrate the change from despotism to democracy, an opportunity was being lost to foster democratic revolutions emanating directly from the people of both Germany and Italy, now on the ropes psychologically as well as militarily.

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